02.07. The Testimony of the Adversary

The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 7. The Testimony of the Adversary His testimony ought not to be cited, it will be said, since he is "a liar and the father of it." But if we bear in mind always who and what he is, his witness may serve a very excellent end. For we must know, unless we are utterly "ignorant of his devices," that his deceptions are generally counterfeits of divine realities. His business is to resist the Almighty by mimicking his words and his works. Hence his lies are often very serviceable as the negatives from which to reproduce photograph’s of God’s truths. And if we will notice what the adversary is especially busy in bringing forward at any period, we may by contrast infer what vital doctrine or important truth of God is struggling into recognition.

We regard this principle as so unquestionable and so distinctly scriptural, that we are always surprised to see Christian writers betrayed by overlooking it. "If you credit any modern miracles in God’s true Church, you must logically concede the genuineness of the alleged miracles of the Romish Church" it is often confidently said. Nay! but have you never read of him "whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders?" (II Thessalonians 10,12; also Revelation 16:14, "spirits of devils working miracles"). The working of Anti-christ is the counterpart of the working of Christ. Not feeble, transparently false, and contemptible are the miracles of the adversary. "Signs and wonders" are predicted of him -- the same terms as those applied to the works of Christ. And not only that, but "all power" is ascribed to him -- the same words employed which Christ used at his ascension, when laying claim to universal authority. Without stopping to consider what limitations the language may have in such connection, its use is certainly startling and indicates that the miracles of Anti-christ are likely to be powerful and impressive, and fitted to "deceive the very elect." But it is most illogical to conclude that we must believe in lying wonders, because we believe in real wonders; and that we must credit the miracles of the Apostate Church because we find those which we credit in the true Church. We say "miracles of the Apostate Church." The fathers and the reformers attributed actual miracles to Anti-christ, -- wonders of a superhuman character, only demoniacal instead of divine, wrought through the agency of evil spirits to simulate the works of the Spirit of God. (Augustine declares that miracles may emanate "either from seducing spirits or from God himself." Huss says, "the disciples of Anti-christ are more distinguished by miracles than those of Christ, and will be so in days to come" [Defence of Wickliffe, p.115]. Calvin says, "Satan perverts the things which otherwise are truly works of God and misemploys miracles to obscure God’s glory" (Comment on II Thessalonians 11:9.) And this view seems scriptural. In describing the perils of the last days Paul declares concerning false teachers that "as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses so do these also resist the truth." The method of resistance which these magicians offered, it will be remembered, was to reproduce the miracles of God’s servants. When Aaron wrought wonders with his rod "they also did in like manner with their enchantments." Miracle was matched by miracle, and wonder by wonder, up to the point where God triumphed by confounding the deceivers. So has it been with the Church of Christ all through her history. Satan has ever been seeking to thwart God by imitation rather than by denial. And we imagine that he has done more for building up his kingdom through the Papal miracle-mongers who have claimed divine power than through the infidel miracle-deniers who have disputed it. But there have been nevertheless certain evident tokens of spuriousness attaching to Romish miracles, that have indicated their true character to believers. There is a kind of Egyptian crudeness about them which suggests the art of the sorcerer rather than the touch of God’s finger. Alleged healing by contact with the bones of dead saints: pains assuaged by making the sign of the Cross over the sufferer; recoveries effected by pilgrimages to the shrines of martyrs, and evil spirits exorcised by the crucifix or the image of the virgin! who does not see the vast contrast in these methods, from the dignified and simple methods of Christ and his Apostles? "God never puts a man upon the stage that Satan does not immediately bring forward an ape," says Godet. He will approach as near the truth as possible, and still keep to his lie. He will give us miracles through his false prophets that seem divine in their end and purpose, but will always be careful to link them to some deadly superstition or fatal heresy. We emphasize the assertion therefore that false miracles are a testimony to the existence some where of the true, and that we ought to be very careful lest in our revolt from the caricature, we swing over to a denial of the genuine. ("According to all evidence of Scripture there never were spurious miracles without the genuine: there never were those from beneath, without those from above at the same time. And prophecy agrees with fact. As tokens of the last day our Lord foretells the signs and wonders of false Christs and prophets, and Joel foretells true ones. Thus every counterfeit implies something counterfeited; and if you prove counterfeit miracles, you only tell us to open our eyes the wider and look for the originals." Rev. Thomas Boys. Proofs of Miraculous Faith and Experience of the Church. p.11,12.) In our own time we have witnessed an extraordinary forth-putting of satanic energy in the works of modern spiritualism. This is a system more versatile in uncleanness, more fertile in blasphemy, and more prolific of adulteries, fleshly and spiritual than any probably that has appeared for many generations. In all its acts and exhibitions, it is so redolent of the foul smoke of Gehenna, that it would seem impossible that any Christian could be deceived by it; yet it has taken thousands of professed disciples of Christ captive, so that they have "gone in the way of Cain, and run greedily after the error of Baalam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core." Its manifestations are characterized by just those impish, grotesque and fantastic exhibitions, which always distinguish the devil’s work from that of Christ. Its rappings and table-tippings and materializations, and communions with the dead,-- what evident tokens of perdition these should be to one who has been at all accustomed to discriminate between divine and satanic traits! And yet as a competent writer declares "these things are unblushingly and openly professed and practiced by Christian men in all lands: those who believe them to be really spiritual, affirming that they are wrought by good spirits; and those who disbelieve them to be the work of spirits at all, playing with them in their unbelief." Alas! that such a system should be able to boast of its millions of adherents, and that in those millions thousands should be found who have borne or still bear the name of Christ. Looking at the matter in the light of Scripture, we know of no more conspicuous sign of the last days and of the "perilous times" therein predicted than this. ("Whenever these things have appeared it was a sign of approaching doom. When the Canaanites practised them the measure of their iniquity was full. When Saul applied to the Witch of Endor, his end was near. When these things prevailed among the Jews, their day was closing. Let us not permit such among us lest it should become the sign to us of declension and doom" -- Tract, What is Mesmerism?. London, Bosworth and Harrison.)

Now it is well known that one of the loudest pretensions of spiritualism is the claim to effect miraculous healing. It declares that Christ wrought his cures through the agency of spirits and that it can do the same. Hence the legion of "healing mediums," and the innumerable "lying wonders" by which their assumptions are enforced. It is very natural that decent Christians in their recoil from such revolting wonder-working, should take the position of stout denial of all miraculous interventions in modern times, and of any supernatural healing. But we believe this to be an unworthy and unfaithful attitude. It is as though Moses and Aaron had retreated in disgust before Jannes and Jambres, instead of pressing on with miracle upon miracle till they had compelled them to surrender to the Lord of Hosts. It is as though Paul had been ashamed of the power of the Spirit that was in him when he met the "damsel possessed with a spirit of divination," and had renounced his miraculous gifts for fear of being identified with sooth-sayers and necromancers, instead of asserting his power as he did the more mightily, and saying to the evil spirit that possessed her, "I command thee in the name of the Lord Jesus to come out of her." To us this outbreak of satanic empiricism would be a strong presumptive proof that somewhere the Lord is reviving among his people the gifts of divine healing: and this constant presentation of the devil’s coin would lead us to search diligently for the genuine coin bearing Christ’s own image and superscription. (It is a curious fact that in the New Testament Greek, the term for sorcery is the same as that for drugs. For example, Revelation 22:15, "Without are dogs and sorcerers", pharmacists, and Galatians 6:19, "The works of the flesh are adultery, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft (pharmacy). And when we think of the legion of medicine-men and medicine-women who prey upon the sick; the spiritualists and trance-doctors with their prescriptions dictated by the dead, who swarm into the sick-rooms of our afflicted humanity, as thick as the frogs of Egypt in the bed-chambers of Pharaoh, there seems to be a grim significance in the use of these words.) A thoughtful writer on this subject has called attention to the fact that the era of modern spiritualism covers almost exactly the era of the alleged revival of the gifts of healing. The most striking instances of professed miraculous cure in modern times happened, as we have shown elsewhere, about fifty years ago in Scotland and in England. The instances have increased and multiplied since, till today the number of devout, prayerful, evangelical Christians who claim to have been miraculously recovered is very large, and their names are sent up from every nation where the Gospel has been preached.

It may be that "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience," seeing God about to put forth his hand again in signs and wonders, and miracles of healing, has determined, as he is wont, to thwart the Lord by caricaturing his work, and bringing it into contempt in the eyes of his own true people. Thus, perhaps, he has thrown himself into the very path which the Almighty is about to enter, that so he may frighten his church from treading it. Or, to state the matter as it seems to us most probable, it may be that the adversary has seized as his most opportune occasion a time when a belief in the supernatural is at its lowest ebb in the church ("When men no longer believe in God they begin to believe in ghosts. In truth there has scarcely ever been an age when men have snatched more greedily after the extravagant than our own which derides the supernatural" -- Schenkel. Hear also Carlyle’s powerful ridicule of Paris, casting off God and running after mesmerism, "O women! O men! great it your infidel faith!" -- French Revolution, p.50), and when a denial of modern miracles is well nigh universal among the learned, and that in such a period he is putting forth the most signal displays of superhuman power in order to set his evil impress upon those who may be impressed by these things. Thus he is copying the Lord’s own method in using miracles as an evidential testimony, only with this end, to establish "the doctrines of devils," and to convert people to the creed of the prince of darkness. But are we to turn against the witness of miracles, because of this attempt to make it perjure itself in the interest of the evil one? Or, to reverse the hypothesis, and suppose that the evil one is the first to enter this field, then comes the question with equal force, whether because of his preoccupancy we should refuse to go into it, if God’s Spirit leads the way. If Anti-christ is about to make his mightiest and most malignant demonstration, ought not the Church, if the Lord will give her power, to confront him with sweet and gracious and humble displays of the Spirit’s saving health? Here we believe Prof. Christlieb speaks again with true scriptural wisdom when he says: "In the last epoch of the consummation of the Church she will again require for the final decisive struggle with the powers of darkness the miraculous interference of her risen Lord; and hence the scriptures lead us to expect miracles once more for this period" (Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, p.332). Meanwhile let us be careful that the adversary does not cheat us out of our birthright. If he has set his trade-mark on miracles, and is using them mightily in his traffic with simple souls, let us not make haste therefore to forfeit whatever right and title in them the Lord has bequeathed to us. Let us not abandon our wheat field because the devil has sowed tares in it. The fact that he sows tares, is his testimony to the genuineness of the wheat. Of course we should expect in the event of the Church’s recovery to any extent of her supernatural gifts that the enemy would put forth redoubled energy to baffle and confound her. Before a sleeping church the adversary walks very softly, and modulates his roar to the finest tones, lest he wake her from her slumber. But let her once rise up and take to herself some long disused power and he will quickly manifest himself in his old character of "a roaring lion walking about seeking whom he may devour."

Erskine, speaking concerning those texts which so clearly confer miraculous gifts upon the Church, says: "I may here remark it, as a striking fact illustrative of the cunning of the prince of darkness, that he has not permitted his instruments to press these texts much, nor to argue from them so triumphantly as they might have done, that the absence of miracles from the Church was a refutation of the Bible. The Bible says, "These signs shall follow them that believe." And yet here is a Church holding this faith and unfollowed by these signs. The ready conclusion from this fact certainly is that the Bible is not true; and we might have expected that this argument would be much used by those who deny the Bible to be a divine revelation. But it has not been much urged; and why? "The subtle enemy of man saw that there was more danger to his own kingdom from the use of this weapon than advantage. It might have led to a result very different from that of disproving the divine authority of the Bible. There is another conclusion to which it might have led, and that is a lack of faith in the Church. And thus the pressing of this argument might have awakened the Church to a sense of her true condition; and this Satan fears more than the Bible, knowing that a church asleep is the most powerful weapon against the world, much more powerful than any infidel arguments" (Brazen Serpent, p.204).

Awake, then O Church! Put on thy strength! Awake indeed to evil surmisings and contempt and opprobrium. For none ever yet escaped these things in attempting to revive a forgotten truth. But these may be tokens of the Lord’s favor. Certainly they are not the credentials of a slumbering and world-pleasing church. At all events, let us fear them less than that other alternative, that the heathen shall cry "Where is thy God?" and none shall be able to answer "Jehovah Rophi is with us."